Secularization as Kenosis

218 | postmodern condition and secularity
a religious identity is in fact the richest form of secular life. Christianity thus has a
guiding function in renewing our social constellation to a truly multicultural society.
In a 2004 article, Vattimo relates the secularization of Western culture to the hatred felt
in the Arab world for the Western lack of values. Whereas in earlier writings Vattimo
stressed the universal meaning of secularization, he now has considerable sympathy for
the ‘incomplete secularization’ of third world countries. 213 His concern is with what he
calls ‘the hegemony of capitalism and American military Imperialism.’ Frustrated with
the Bush administration in the United States and the presidency of Berlusconi in his
own country, he goes as far as proposing a renewed understanding of communism. 214
In an essay on the renewal of communism, he writes: “Auch ich war ins Postmoderne
Ende der Ideologien verwickelt”, 215 He stresses the need for a renewed understanding
of communism. How can we understand this? Vattimo’s philosophy was entirely dedicated
to overcome the ‘grand narratives’, and Communism seems to be the greatest
narrative of them all. And by replacing the left-wing utopianism with a postmodern
heterotopianism, his farewell to leftist idealism seemed complete. Vattimo explains his
position as follows. The Wende of 1989 was not only the downfall of great narratives, it
was also the instantiation of the great narrative of capitalism. Ironically, it was exactly
in the victory of capitalism over communism that Marx’s theories on the concentration
of capital turned out to be right. And it was precisely in the downfall of ideologies that
capitalism really acquired an indomitable status that the left did not dare to contest. He
writes:
Wie kommt es, dass der Kapitalismus der sogenannten freien Märkte seine grössten
Triumphe ausgerechnet jetzt feiert, da der sowjetische Staat abgedankt hat und der
Kommunismus nicht mehr droht? Dass wir das Ende des Kalten Krieges bedauern
müssen, da wir in immer heissere Kriege hineingetrieben werden? 216
The predominance of neo-liberalism, with its insistence on a global, free market economy,
not Marxism, is the true heir of strong metaphysical thought. In the European
Union, Vattimo sees the possibility for a third road, as an alternative to the American
hegemony and its terroristic counterpart. The weakening of thought is not so much
over, for Vattimo, but it needs to be applied more fully. The spread of neo-liberalism,
the supposed naturalness of a free market economy, the military operations of the free
countries, and the increasing control of governments over the private lives of their citizens,
are – in Vattimo’s eyes – strong ideas that function in an objectivist discourse.
Only Marxism and socialism can bring change to a Europe that will otherwise be subject
to American hegemony.
In a more encompassing meaning, the negative account of Weak Thought as a
protest against any form of representation and hierarchic ordering of society is in severe
crisis. As a model of such a radically flattened society, Vattimo points to Hardt
213 Gianni Vattimo, ‘Towards a twilight of values?’, in: Jérôme Bindé, editor, The Future of values: 21st
century talks (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004), 7–12.
214 Vattimo, Kommunist, 7–8.
215 Vattimo’s describes his conversion to communism as follows: “Da ich sehe, wie de ‘Entwicklung’, die
der Markt garantieren soll, scheitert, muss einer wie ich, der nie Kommunist war (das gestehe ich), einer werden,
um die Wahrheit der Marx’schen Prophezeihungen in corpere vili zu untersuchen.” Vattimo, Kommunist,
37.
216 Vattimo, Kommunist, 36.